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Graphics Problem

Hi everyone,

I have a problem with the graphics card in my MSI laptop that only happens during games. What happens is whatever game I'm playing will freeze then the screen will go a random colour then go black and If I'm lucky will dump me back in to the game again. If I'm not so luck I will need to alt-tab and kill the task. The event log gives me this error.

Now I've been trying to get to the bottom of this for months to no avail. I don't think it's hardware as some games work fine. Temperatures are normal and I don't get any artifacts or screen tears. Deus Ex HR and BF3 did up until the latest patch though it does take a while for it to happen. Other games like TF2 and CSS will crash after less than 5 mins of gameplay. The internet reveals this to be a wide spread problem affecting both AMD/ATI cards and Nvidia cards equally but no definite fix. I've probably answered my own question but this is really starting to annoy me.

Sounds like a driver issue if you're getting that message; the display driver keeps crashing and Windows manages to recover it. That said I have had a similar error related to other issues, namely a failing HDD (not sure why). If you're got the latest driver, maybe try rolling back to a previous one and see if the issue persists. Failing that, check other components to see if they're acting up during crash events.

It's most likely a driver issue. Your best bet is to completely remove the current driver and install the latest and greatest available. Related question: what version of Windows are we talking about here?

A very remote possibility: check what power settings are enabled - sometimes weird proprietary software starts kicking in on various brand laptops after so much heat / time / battery etc that might be screwing things.

All times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone.